Prosecutors tried to block the testimony of an alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in the terror trial of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, after a 14-page statement providing, among other things, reasons for Al-Qaeda operations against the US.

The written testimony was followed by a request from attorneys
for bin Laden’s son-in-law to allow for a closed-circuit video
link from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Guantanamo cell, because he
was “unavailable to physically appear at the trial, and his
testimony is necessary to prevent a failure of justice in this
matter,” according to Suleiman Abu Gaith’s lawyers.

Abu Gaith's was arrested in February, originally charged with one
count of conspiracy to kill Americans. A superseding indictment
unsealed, however, added two new charges: conspiracy to provide material
support and resources to terrorists, and providing material
support and resources to terrorists.

The prosecution didn’t want the video interview with Mohammed to
happen, citing that the request had been submitted too late, and
the earlier fact that Mohammed had said he wouldn’t testify.

They argued at bin Laden’s son-in-law’s two-week trial that Abu
Gaith, 48, was Al-Qaeda’s spokesman and recruiter of fighters,
and that he knew of future attacks, something the defense said
there was no evidence of, hence the late request for Mohammed to
appear.

In the February statement, submitted to New York’s federal court
late on Sunday, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed defended Suleiman Abu
Gaith, seeing him as merely a tool for rallying fighters to join
the terrorist group and that his duty didn’t necessitate knowing
the details of military operations “for fear that they would
be botched or miscarried.” The skills he insisted were
needed for such a job had to do with being an “eloquent,
spellbinding speaker,” according to the statement.
Also noteworthy was a historical background into past US actions
in Afghanistan. He called the terrorist cell’s mission a “war
of attrition,” according to information obtained by The
Guardian.

The statement is one of a very few issued by Mohammed following
his 2003 capture by the United States. Mohammed himself said he
wanted to appear on screen for the interview, as the initial
February questions from attorneys reminded him too much of the
leading style of his interrogators at Guantanamo.

An extensive part of Mohammed’s preliminary February interview
also focuses on a history of the ‘Al-Qaeda versus the US’
conflict, especially how the 2001 attacks led to a costly and
weakening change in US foreign policy, which was allegedly the
plan all along.

“Every state of emergency declared and every change of alert
level that inflicts specific procedures on the military and
civilian sectors costs the country millions of dollars. It is
enough that the US government has incurred losses upwards of a
trillion dollars in the wars it has waged in the aftermath of
9/11, the bleeding of which continues to this day,” the
testimony read.

In 2007, Mohammed eventually confessed to playing a large role in
the 9/11 attacks and 31 other acts of terrorism, to varying
degrees. The later 2014 testimony contained in part the
statements he had made back then concerning an all-out US war on
Islam.

The interview with Mohammed, who’s been at Guantanamo since 2006,
portrayed the ongoing conflict as that between a wealthy,
worldwide war machine with aspirations of global domination and a
much smaller, but more cunning adversary.

“The enemy occupier of the Islamic world is a super power
with a budget of billions while we are a small organization whose
members are limited in numbers and capabilities. There is no
comparison between the two sides, so it is obvious that we would
have to resort to a long war of attrition to which the military
and media alike contribute,” he said during the initial
interview, which became the basis of the 14-page document.

He likewise attacked the reasons for the US operation of the
Guantanamo prison as hypocritical and self-serving. According to
Mohammed, Americans have never shied away from dealing with those
it deemed terrorists, funding extremist Islamic organizations
since their rise in the 1980’s, especially where it concerned a
proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. “At the
time, Jihadist speeches were accepted and even supported and
applauded by the West because they mirrored their strategic
interest,” he said, adding that the terminology following
the 90’s Islamist uprisings in Bosnia and Chechnya changed
sharply from ‘Mujahid’ to ‘terrorist’, and from ‘Jihad’ to
‘terrorism’.

He saw the expansion of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan as rooted in the
American neglect of the country after the Soviet pullout; he saw
the US foreign policy towards Afghanistan as “stupid”
and “completely blind to what was happening in the
camps.”

Mohammed further said that the US also worked closely with
Pakistani intelligence services to weaken Afghanistan in the
90’s. “All of that was done to ensure that even if the
Mujahideen prevailed and expelled the Russians they would be left
powerless and Afghanistan would remain dependent on Pakistan,
India, Iran or Tajikistan, just as the West desired,”
Mohammed stated.

The last time Mohammed had made a statement was in 2008, at a
military hearing later abandoned and followed by a confession to
participation in the 9/11 attacks.

Following his Pakistan capture in 2003, Mohammed suffered
water-boarding 183 times in one month at the hands of the CIA.